


Of Ice Skates and Hot Chocolate

by bronzemist



Series: Peapod McHanzo Week 2018 [6]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, Ice Skating, M/M, Peapod McHanzo Week, Winter, other characters make brief appearances/are mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 14:46:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13572792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bronzemist/pseuds/bronzemist
Summary: for Day 6 ofaughtpunkandwyntera's peapod McHanzo week.Finding themselves at loose ends in Canada during the winter, Jesse McCree and Hanzo Shimada decide to go ice-skating on an outdoor trail. After all, what could be more romantic than skating through a winter wonderland?





	Of Ice Skates and Hot Chocolate

"What do you mean, you can't come get us for a week?" Hanzo demanded.

"I apologize, Agent Shimada, but the Orca is needed by other agents until next Monday." On the screen, Winston fiddled with his glasses.

"Just, let me get this straight." Jesse cut in. "The two of us get sent to Canada for a mission, which has now been cancelled, and you can't pick us up for a week?"

"Er, yes, I'm afraid so." Winston fidgeted, unable to meet their eyes.

Hanzo frowned. This entire setup - the cancelled mission, the lack of transportation, Winston's uneasiness - reeked of Genji's mischief.

Beside him, Jesse crossed his arms. "Y'all wouldn't be trying to play a trick on us, would ya?" He asked.

Winston opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Tracer leaned into the frame.

"Sorry, Jess, but you two needed a vacation!" She chirped.

"A vacation?" Hanzo repeated, brows rising.

"Yes, Hanzo, a vacation," Genji chimed in, leaning in on Winston's other side. The gorilla looked a bit trapped. "A time where you don't work and actually relax - alien concepts to you, I know."

"So instead of sending us to the Bahamas, or some place else nice and warm," Jesse interrupted, "you send us to Canada in the middle of January?"

Tracer shrugged. "You would've been too suspicious if we sent you two on a solo mission somewhere warm. Besides, you're always going on about how pretty snow is."

Before either Jesse or Hanzo could say anything more, Genji flashed a peace sign. "Enjoy your vacation, we'll call you if there's an emergency, goodbye!"

With that, the call ended.

Hanzo looked at Jesse. He stared back, just as flabbergasted.

"It seems we are on vacation." Said Hanzo eventually.

"Looks that way, honey." Jesse agreed.

For a few moments, neither of them said anything. Hanzo looked around the hotel room Winston had arranged for them. It was nicer than the usual places they stayed on missions, which really should've been his first clue that something was afoot.

"We have a week to do... nothing." Hanzo hated to admit that Genji was right, but a week without work of any kind was indeed something of a foreign concept to him. Ever since he was a young child, Hanzo had always had something to do - lessons or training, then later jobs and missions.

"Well, c'mon," Jesse seemed to have accepted the idea, and was booting up his tablet. "Let's see what all there is to do in this town."

 

The entrance to the skating trail was a large, snow-covered clearing with several small huts selling things like hot chocolate and warm soup scattered around the edges. There were white lights strung from tree to tree, filling the clearing with a warm glow.

The skating trail was a bit more crowded than Hanzo had been expecting after sundown, making him hesitant. While he understood the appeal of skating through the forest surrounded by twinkling lights, how romantic could it be if they were surrounded by other people?

"Don't worry, sugar, this trail's nearly a mile long," Jesse whispered in his ear. "It'll be nice."

Rather than alleviating his discomfort, Jesse's words only increased it. Hanzo still had not figured out how to tell him that he had never skated before in his life. And now he was expected to skate a mile, two if they wanted to loop back?

Hanzo bit his lip. He should've said something back at the hotel, suggested some other activity for them to do. A museum, a café, a movie - anything other than skating.

He glanced over at Jesse, and melted at the sight of the happy smile on the other man's face. Ever since he'd seen the advertisement for this place, Jesse had been nearly bouncing with excitement. Hanzo couldn't bring himself to shatter it.

Skating couldn't be that hard, he thought to himself. Surely someone as graceful as himself, trained in martial arts, would have no trouble with it.

At the far end of the clearing, just before the entrance onto the trail itself, there was a small hut offering skate rentals. Jesse led them over, gloved hand holding Hanzo's own.

"Howdy there," he greeted the young woman sitting in the hut.

"Hello!" She smiled up at them, eyes crinkling in amusement at Jesse's exaggerated accent. "Two sets of skates?"

"Regular ones for me, and, uh..." Jesse glanced down at Hanzo's metal feet.

"Do you have any that are suitable for prosthetics? Or omnics?" Hanzo asked.

The woman nodded, still smiling, and quickly produced a set of black skates for Jesse and an odd pair for Hanzo that had been specifically designed for omnics.

"The base is slightly magnetic," she explained, "so they should stick to your feet pretty well. These straps are just to help keep them secure."

She then directed them to a set of lockers surrounded by benches, where they could store their footwear. "Or," she went on, "you can carry them with you. There's another rental place at the other end of the trail, and you can drop your skates off there if you don't want to make the loop back."

"What do you think, sweetpea?" Jesse asked Hanzo.

Hanzo bit his lip. The less skating he had to do the better, but he didn't want to rain on Jesse's parade... "I have no preference. I leave it up to you."

"Now that ain't fair, honey," Jesse complained good-naturedly. "Well then, I'll avail myself of one of your lockers, miss."

The young woman handed him a key, and they walked over to the benches to put on their skates.

Hanzo worked out how to do so quickly - the skates did exactly as she had said they would, snapping to his feet and holding sturdy as he moved them about. It took Jesse a little longer, but soon they were both ready to begin skating.

It was difficult to walk with the blades digging into the snow. Hanzo felt clumsier than he had in many years, stumbling down the short path from the lockers to the ice. He took comfort from the fact that Jesse was doing no better, tripping and swaying just as much.

He was relived to see that despite the crowd in the clearing, the skating trail itself was relatively empty. This section at the beginning had been formed into a large circle; Hanzo could see an area that had been cordoned off for hockey, and another area where some families with very small children had congregated. Lines of white lights marked where the trail narrowed and entered the trees.

"You ready, darlin'?" Jesse asked, as Hanzo paused at the edge of the ice.

"Yes," said Hanzo with confidence he did not feel. He stepped out onto the ice, wobbling as he adjusted to the difference between the hard ice and the soft snow. He slid forward. This wasn't so hard, he thought to himself, sliding forward a few more feet. He could do this -

That was when his feet slid out from under him and he found himself lying on the ice, a sharp pain radiating up his tailbone.

"Y'alright, babe?" Jesse called from the shoreline, laughter in his voice.

Hanzo pushed himself up on his elbows and glared at him.

"Why don't you come out here and see?" He demanded.

Jesse held up his hands, pacifying, and took a step forward onto the ice. He'd barely moved an inch before he too was flat on his back.

Hanzo had a sudden suspicion that he wasn't the only one here who had never gone ice skating before.

He struggled to his feet, the process taking far longer than it should have. Finally, he was up and somewhat stable. He watched as Jesse too managed to get back up on his skates and wobble over to him.

"Jesse McCree," he began, arms crossed over his chest, "have you ever been skating before?"

Jesse looked down at him with red cheeks, rubbing a gloved hand over the back of his neck. "Er... not exactly?"

Hanzo couldn't help himself. He laughed.

"Jesse, I've never been ice-skating in my life."

The other man's eyes widened in surprise. Then he laughed as well. "Well, aren't we a pair?"

They stood there, laughing, for several moments as other skaters moved by them, some of them giving them confused looks. Eventually, their mirth died, and Jesse rubbed the back of his neck again, an embarrassed expression on his face. Clearly, he had thought Hanzo knew how to skate.

Before he could open his mouth, Hanzo reached out and took his hand. "Shall we skate?"

"You still want to?" Jesse asked, squeezing his hand in return.

"Jesse, I want to spend time with you." He said honestly, ignoring the twinge of anxiety that coursed through him at being so open. "If that means spending the next two hours falling all over the place, then that is what I'll do."

Jesse stared at him with wide eyes for such a long time that Hanzo began to worry he'd said something wrong.

"Darlin', that is the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me." He pulled him closer and kissed him firmly.

Once he was released, Hanzo looked up at him with a raised brow.

"Is that a yes, we are going to skate, or no, we are going to go back to the hotel?" He asked.

"I've got a better idea."

They returned their skates to the amused rental girl, and then wandered over to one of the hot chocolate stands.

"There's a walking path through the forest that follows pretty much the same route as the skating trail," Jesse explained while they stood in the line. "Same pretty scenery, but no..."

"Falling on our asses?" Hanzo finished with a smirk.

"Well, yeah." Jesse grinned at him bashfully, letting go of his hand to wrap his arm around Hanzo's shoulders.

He leaned into the embrace, reveling in the fact that he no longer instinctively flinched from this kind of contact. This kind of closeness with another was something he could've only dreamed of in the not-so-distant past, and he still wondered sometimes how he had been so lucky as to have a man like Jesse McCree love him.

"I can hear your mind buzzing from here," Jesse teased. "What're you thinking about?"

"How lucky I am to have you," Hanzo replied honestly, smirking as Jesse's eyes grew wide and his cheeks flushed bright red.

"You can't just say stuff like that when we're in public, darlin', I can't - "

Hanzo laughed and leaned up to peck him on the cheek. "Very well, I will restrain myself."

Ten minutes later, they were walking down the snowy path, hot chocolates in hand. Jesse had yet to remove his arm from Hanzo's shoulders, something he was in no hurry to point out. This walking trail was much less busy than the skating one, though they had passed a few other couples, most of them with dogs. Hanzo thought wistfully of Mochi, who was back on Gibraltar being spoiled rotten by Reinhardt.

"I wish we could've brought Mochi," he sighed.

"Yeah, that lil' pup would've loved this," Jesse agreed. "Next time we go on vacation, I'll remind Lena to make sure to send him with us."

"But then how will she and Genji get the satisfaction of feeling they've gotten one over us?" Hanzo asked, smiling at the idea of spending a day like this with their dog's company.

Jesse chuckled. "They'll think of something, don't you worry about that."

They fell into a comfortable silence. It was something that had taken Hanzo a little while to adjust to, back when they were friends but not yet lovers - being in someone's company without talking but not feeling awkward.

It had been the realization that Jesse's company in particular made him comfortable in silence than had been one of his first hints that his feelings towards the cowboy were more than simply friendly.

Snow began lightly falling as they continued walking the trail. Hanzo sipped at his hot chocolate, lukewarm now, as they wound their way down the path.

It had been years since he had seen snow in person. Snow was relatively common in Hanamura during the winter, but since he had left Japan, he had often found himself in warmer areas during the winter. He had always loved winter; the peace and beauty of snow, how he and Genji had played in it as children, before falling asleep under the kotatsu...

How fitting, he mused, that he would see his first snowfall in ten years in the company of another person he loved.

"Didn't see much snow until I joined up with Blackwatch," Jesse admitted, "always thought it was real pretty."

"It often snowed in Hanamura during the winter," Hanzo said, "when we were children, Genji and I would have snowball fights in the courtyards."

Jesse chuckled. "You two must've been awfully cute."

"I'm afraid I don't have any photographic evidence, but yes, I believe we were." Those memories were bittersweet, forever tainted by what he had done to his brother, but he was beginning to be able to focus on the sweet more than the bitter.

"You know, I'm glad those two set us up," Jesse said. "It's nice being able to spend time with you, just us." Hanzo could feel his thumb rubbing his shoulder through his coat.

"It is nice," Hanzo agreed, leaning into the touch, "and this is only the beginning of our vacation, you know."

"Five more days," said Jesse idly.

"No brothers or sisters or missions to distract us," Hanzo continued, leading, "no Athena watching our every move..."

"I think I like what you're insinuating, Mr. Shimada." Jesse grinned at him. Hanzo smirked back.

"All I'm suggesting is that we should make the most of it."

Jesse laughed and turned, taking Hanzo's face in his hands and kissing him thoroughly. "God, I love you."

Hanzo sighed contentedly, his own hands dropping to Jesse's waist as he deepened the kiss. A week for just himself and Jesse, no responsibilities... he could hardly wait.

**Author's Note:**

> progress continues to be made
> 
> I'm much happier with this one than I was with the last day, though this story does follow after that one in the shaky timeline I've worked out for these stories
> 
> thank you to everyone who has left kudos and comments on these fics, I really appreciate it!
> 
> as always you can find me on tumblr at [bronzemist](http://bronzemist.tumblr.com/), come talk to me about mchanzo or overwatch or whatever!


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